Sunil Kothari

🪔 About

Sunil Kothari (1933-2020) was a distinguished Indian dance historian, scholar, and critic, renowned for his extensive documentation and analysis of Indian classical dance forms. Born on December 20, 1933, in Mumbai, he initially pursued a career as a chartered accountant before dedicating his life to dance studies. Kothari received early training in Bharatanatyam under T. Kuppaiah Pillai and Kalyanasundaram Pillai, and in Kathak under Badri Prasad of the Jaipur gharana, also studying at Prof. Deodhar's School of Indian Music. He earned his M.A. in 1964 and a Ph.D. in 1977 from M.S. University, Baroda, with his doctoral research focusing on the dance-drama traditions of South India, including Bhagavata Mela, Kuchipudi, and Kuravanji. In 1986, he was awarded a D.Litt. by Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta, for his work on dance sculptures in medieval temples of North Gujarat. Throughout his prolific career, Kothari served as the Uday Shankar Professor and Head of the Dance Department at Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, from 1980 to 1995. He was also a Professor and Dean of the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, an institution he was instrumental in establishing. His international engagements included serving as a Fulbright Professor at New York University, the University of Georgia, Atlanta, and the University of Chicago, Illinois. Kothari was a prolific writer, authoring over 20 books on various Indian classical dance forms, including Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Kuchipudi, Kathak, Manipuri, Chhau, and Sattriya. His scholarly work, "Sattriya: Classical Dance of Assam," significantly contributed to the understanding and recognition of this dance form globally. He was a dance critic for The Times of India group of publications for over four decades and a foreign correspondent for Dance Magazine, New York. For his immense contributions to Indian classical dance, Sunil Kothari received numerous accolades, including the Padma Shri in 2001, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1995, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dance Critics Association, New York, in 2011. He passed away on December 27, 2020, in Delhi, at the age of 87, due to cardiac arrest following COVID-19 complications. Awards & Honours: Padma Shri (2001), Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1995), Kumar Chandrak (1961), Ranjitram Suvarna Chandrak (2012), Lifetime Achievement Award by the Dance Critics Association, New York (2011), Gaurav Puraskar award by Gujarat Sangeet Natak Akademi (2000), Akademi Ratna (Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellow) (2018).